Meanwhile Anne Garland had gone home, and, being weary with her ramble in
search of Matilda, sat silent in a corner of the room. Her mother was
passing the time in giving utterance to every conceivable surmise on the
cause of Miss Johnson's disappearance that the human mind could frame, to
which Anne returned monosyllabic answers, the result, not of
indifference, but of intense preoccupation. Presently Loveday, the
father, came to the door; her mother vanished with him, and they remained
closeted together a long time. Anne went into the garden and seated
herself beneath the branching tree whose boughs had sheltered her during
so many hours of her residence here. Her attention was fixed more upon
the miller's wing of the irregular building before her than upon that
occupied by her mother, for she could not help expecting every moment to
see some one run out with a wild face and announce some awful clearing up
of the mystery.
Every sound set her on the alert, and hearing the tread of a horse in the
lane she looked round eagerly. Gazing at her over the hedge was Festus
Derriman, mounted on such an incredibly tall animal that he could see to
her very feet over the thick and broad thorn fence. She no sooner
recognized him than she withdrew her glance; but as his eyes were fixed
steadily upon her this was a futile manoeuvre.
'I saw you look round!' he exclaimed crossly. 'What have I done to make
you behave like that? Come, Miss Garland, be fair. 'Tis no use to turn
your back upon me.' As she did not turn he went on--'Well, now, this is
enough to provoke a saint. Now I tell you what, Miss Garland; here I'll
stay till you do turn round, if 'tis all the afternoon. You know my
temper--what I say I mean.' He seated himself firmly in the saddle,
plucked some leaves from the hedge, and began humming a song, to show how
absolutely indifferent he was to the flight of time.
'What have you come for, that you are so anxious to see me?' inquired
Anne, when at last he had wearied her patience, rising and facing him
with the added independence which came from a sense of the hedge between
them.
'There, I knew you would turn round!' he said, his hot angry face invaded
by a smile in which his teeth showed like white hemmed in by red at
chess.
'What do you want, Mr. Derriman?' said she.
'"What do you want, Mr. Derriman?"--now listen to that! Is that my
encouragement?'
Anne bowed superciliously, and moved away.
'I have just heard news that explains all that,' said the giant, eyeing
her movements with somnolent irascibility. 'My uncle has been letting
things out. He was here late last night, and he saw you.'
'Indeed he didn't,' said Anne.
'O, now! He saw Trumpet-major Loveday courting somebody like you in that
garden walk; and when he came you ran indoors.'
'It is not true, and I wish to hear no more.'
'Upon my life, he said so! How can you do it, Miss Garland, when I, who
have enough money to buy up all the Lovedays, would gladly come to terms
with ye? What a simpleton you must be, to pass me over for him! There,
now you are angry because I said simpleton!--I didn't mean simpleton, I
meant misguided--misguided rosebud! That's it--run off,' he continued in
a raised voice, as Anne made towards the garden door. 'But I'll have you
yet. Much reason you have to be too proud to stay with me. But it won't
last long; I shall marry you, madam, if I choose, as you'll see.'
When he was quite gone, and Anne had calmed down from the not altogether
unrelished fear and excitement that he always caused her, she returned to
her seat under the tree, and began to wonder what Festus Derriman's story
meant, which, from the earnestness of his tone, did not seem like a pure
invention. It suddenly flashed upon her mind that she herself had heard
voices in the garden, and that the persons seen by Farmer Derriman, of
whose visit and reclamation of his box the miller had told her, might
have been Matilda and John Loveday. She further recalled the strange
agitation of Miss Johnson on the preceding evening, and that it occurred
just at the entry of the dragoon, till by degrees suspicion amounted to
conviction that he knew more than any one else supposed of that lady's
disappearance.
It was just at this time that the trumpet-major descended to the mill
after his talk with his brother on the down. As fate would have it,
instead of entering the house he turned aside to the garden and walked
down that pleasant enclosure, to learn if he were likely to find in the
other half of it the woman he loved so well.
Yes, there she was, sitting on the seat of logs that he had repaired for
her, under the apple-tree; but she was not facing in his direction. He
walked with a noisier tread, he coughed, he shook a bough, he did
everything, in short, but the one thing that Festus did in the same
circumstances--call out to her. He would not have ventured on that for
the world. Any of his signs would have been sufficient to attract her a
day or two earlier; now she would not turn. At last, in his fond
anxiety, he did what he had never done before without an invitation, and
crossed over into Mrs. Garland's half of the garden, till he stood before
her.
When she could not escape him she arose, and, saying 'Good afternoon,
trumpet-major,' in a glacial manner unusual with her, walked away to
another part of the garden.
Loveday, quite at a loss, had not the strength of mind to persevere
further. He had a vague apprehension that some imperfect knowledge of
the previous night's unhappy business had reached her; and, unable to
remedy the evil without telling more than he dared, he went into the
mill, where his father still was, looking doleful enough, what with his
concern at events and the extra quantity of flour upon his face through
sticking so closely to business that day.
'Well, John; Bob has told you all, of course? A queer, strange,
perplexing thing, isn't it? I can't make it out at all. There must be
something wrong in the woman, or it couldn't have happened. I haven't
been so upset for years.'
'Nor have I. I wouldn't it should have happened for all I own in the
world,' said the dragoon. 'Have you spoke to Anne Garland to-day--or has
anybody been talking to her?'
'Festus Derriman rode by half-an-hour ago, and talked to her over the
hedge.'
John guessed the rest, and, after standing on the threshold in silence
awhile, walked away towards the camp.
All this time his brother Robert had been hastening along in pursuit of
the woman who had withdrawn from the scene to avoid the exposure and
complete overthrow which would have resulted had she remained. As the
distance lengthened between himself and the mill, Bob was conscious of
some cooling down of the excitement that had prompted him to set out; but
he did not pause in his walk till he had reached the head of the river
which fed the mill-stream. Here, for some indefinite reason, he allowed
his eyes to be attracted by the bubbling spring whose waters never failed
or lessened, and he stopped as if to look longer at the scene; it was
really because his mind was so absorbed by John's story.
The sun was warm, the spot was a pleasant one, and he deposited his
bundle and sat down. By degrees, as he reflected, first on John's view
and then on his own, his convictions became unsettled; till at length he
was so balanced between the impulse to go on and the impulse to go back,
that a puff of wind either way would have been well-nigh sufficient to
decide for him. When he allowed John's story to repeat itself in his
ears, the reasonableness and good sense of his advice seemed beyond
question. When, on the other hand, he thought of his poor Matilda's
eyes, and her, to him, pleasant ways, their charming arrangements to
marry, and her probable willingness still, he could hardly bring himself
to do otherwise than follow on the road at the top of his speed.
This strife of thought was so well maintained that sitting and standing,
he remained on the borders of the spring till the shadows had stretched
out eastwards, and the chance of overtaking Matilda had grown
considerably less. Still he did not positively go towards home. At last
he took a guinea from his pocket, and resolved to put the question to the
hazard. 'Heads I go; tails I don't.' The piece of gold spun in the air
and came down heads.
'No, I won't go, after all,' he said. 'I won't be steered by accidents
any more.'
He picked up his bundle and switch, and retraced his steps towards
Overcombe Mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with
gloomy and indifferent blows. When he got within sight of the house he
beheld David in the road.
'All right--all right again, captain!', shouted that retainer. 'A
wedding after all! Hurrah!'
'Ah--she's back again?' cried Bob, seizing David, ecstatically, and
dancing round with him.
'No--but it's all the same! it is of no consequence at all, and no harm
will be done! Maister and Mrs. Garland have made up a match, and mean to
marry at once, that the wedding victuals may not be wasted! They felt
'twould be a thousand pities to let such good things get blue-vinnied for
want of a ceremony to use 'em upon, and at last they have thought of
this.'
'Victuals--I don't care for the victuals!' bitterly cried Bob, in a tone
of far higher thought. 'How you disappoint me!' and he went slowly
towards the house.
His father appeared in the opening of the mill-door, looking more
cheerful than when they had parted. 'What, Robert, you've been after
her?' he said. 'Faith, then, I wouldn't have followed her if I had been
as sure as you were that she went away in scorn of us. Since you told me
that, I have not looked for her at all.'
'I was wrong, father,' Bob replied gravely, throwing down his bundle and
stick. 'Matilda, I find, has not gone away in scorn of us; she has gone
away for other reasons. I followed her some way; but I have come back
again. She may go.'
'Why is she gone?' said the astonished miller.
Bob had intended, for Matilda's sake, to give no reason to a living soul
for her departure. But he could not treat his father thus reservedly;
and he told.
'She has made great fools of us,' said the miller deliberately; 'and she
might have made us greater ones. Bob, I thought th' hadst more sense.'
'Well, don't say anything against her, father,' implored Bob. ''Twas a
sorry haul, and there's an end on't. Let her down quietly, and keep the
secret. You promise that?'
'I do.' Loveday the elder remained thinking awhile, and then went
on--'Well, what I was going to say is this: I've hit upon a plan to get
out of the awkward corner she has put us in. What you'll think of it I
can't say.'
'David has just given me the heads.'
'And do it hurt your feelings, my son, at such a time?'
'No--I'll bring myself to bear it, anyhow! Why should I object to other
people's happiness because I have lost my own?' said Bob, with saintly
self-sacrifice in his air.
'Well said!' answered the miller heartily. 'But you may be sure that
there will be no unseemly rejoicing, to disturb ye in your present frame
of mind. All the morning I felt more ashamed than I cared to own at the
thought of how the neighbours, great and small, would laugh at what they
would call your folly, when they knew what had happened; so I resolved to
take this step to stave it off, if so be 'twas possible. And when I saw
Mrs. Garland I knew I had done right. She pitied me so much for having
had the house cleaned in vain, and laid in provisions to waste, that it
put her into the humour to agree. We mean to do it right off at once,
afore the pies and cakes get mouldy and the blackpot stale. 'Twas a good
thought of mine and hers, and I am glad 'tis settled,' he concluded
cheerfully.
'Poor Matilda!' murmured Bob.
'There--I was afraid 'twould hurt thy feelings,' said the miller, with
self-reproach: 'making preparations for thy wedding, and using them for
my own!'
'No,' said Bob heroically; 'it shall not. It will be a great comfort in
my sorrow to feel that the splendid grub, and the ale, and your stunning
new suit of clothes, and the great table-cloths you've bought, will be
just as useful now as if I had married myself. Poor Matilda! But you
won't expect me to join in--you hardly can. I can sheer off that day
very easily, you know.'
'Nonsense, Bob!' said the miller reproachfully.
'I couldn't stand it--I should break down.'
'Deuce take me if I would have asked her, then, if I had known 'twas
going to drive thee out of the house! Now, come, Bob, I'll find a way of
arranging it and sobering it down, so that it shall be as melancholy as
you can require--in short, just like a funeral, if thou'lt promise to
stay?'
'Very well,' said the afflicted one. 'On that condition I'll stay.'